Splendors and Glooms (3 page)

Clara didn’t answer. Her ears had caught the sound of footsteps on the front stairs. The nursery door opened. “Clara, dearest!”

Clara went to her mother. Mrs. Wintermute was tall, shapely, and dressed in black. Her face was youthful, though her light-brown hair was turning white. Clara embraced her tenderly, careful not to crush her mother’s dress.

“Clara, dear, aren’t you dressed yet?”

“No, Mamma. It’s my fault, Mamma. Agnes told me to hold still so she could arrange my hair, but I wouldn’t.”

Mrs. Wintermute smiled forgivingly. “I expect you’re excited.” A faint crease appeared on her brow. “You’re rather flushed, dear.” She placed the backs of her fingers against Clara’s cheek and then her forehead.

“I’m very well, Mamma.”

“It’s the excitement, madam,” added Agnes.

Mrs. Wintermute relaxed. “Of course. Clara, dear, your papa was called out this morning, but he hopes to be home in time for the party. I hope you’re not disappointed. We planned to give you your special present at breakfast.”

“I don’t mind waiting, Mamma,” Clara said earnestly.

Mrs. Wintermute held up her right hand. In it was a velvet box. “Papa said we needn’t wait — that I might give it to you now. We thought you might want to wear it to the party.”

Clara raised her eyes to her mother’s face, received a nod of permission, and took the box into her hands. It was round and soft, a desirable object in its own right. Carefully she slid her fingernails under the lid and opened it. “Oh!”

Inside was a locket: a golden oval with a band of deep-blue enamel, a circle of seed pearls, and a sapphire in the center. Clara gasped with wonder. She tilted the locket and watched the sapphire flash; it was a deep, mysterious blue, almost black.

Mrs. Wintermute smiled with her eyes full of tears. “Open it.”

L
izzie Rose was hungry. As she pushed the puppet stage through the street, her nostrils drew in savory odors from the street vendors: roasted chestnuts, baked potatoes, and coffee. Her stomach growled, complaining that she had eaten nothing since breakfast. At noontime, Grisini had bought his usual sausage roll — she could smell the garlic on his breath — but he hadn’t brought anything home. That was Grisini. Some days he came home with sausage rolls or meat pies and announced a feast, kissing his fingertips in praise of his own generosity. Other days, he crept off like a cat and slunk back satisfied, never bothering as to whether Parsefall or Lizzie Rose had anything to eat.

Lizzie Rose sniffed. Parsefall had eaten, too. Underneath his dirty-little-boy smell, she caught a whiff of cabbage and fat bacon, spoils from their landlady’s kitchen. He must have cadged something to eat from Mrs. Pinchbeck. Lizzie Rose was glad for him — it worried her that Parsefall was so thin — but she couldn’t help thinking that he was as bad as Grisini. He didn’t share. If she had begged food from Mrs. Pinchbeck, she would have given some to him.

The wheel of the puppet theatre caught on the curb. Grisini, at the front of the caravan, waited for Lizzie Rose to lift it free. Lizzie Rose grasped the underside of the cart and jerked upward. For the thousandth time she read the legend on the back:
THE PHENOMENAL PROFESSOR GRISINI AND HIS VENETIAN FANTOCCINI
. The letters were jet-black, adorned with gold curlicues. Lizzie Rose had watched Grisini repaint them a week ago. Grisini painted with his eyes half shut and his brush looping crazily: first the letters and then a canal scene of Venice, with winged lions and gondolas and a dancer in a black mask. The colors were weirdly bright and the letters almost too fancy to read, but the effect could not have been bettered. That, too, was Grisini: a bad guardian, a bad man perhaps, but a matchless artist.

“Foxy-Loxy,” hissed Parsefall, “it’s my turn to push.”

Lizzie Rose ignored him. She knew she looked like a fox, with her reddish hair and narrow face, but she wasn’t going to put up with being called Foxy-Loxy. Her father had named her for a queen, and her mother had named her for a flower. She tossed her hair over her shoulders, lips prim.

“Ain’t you tired?” persisted Parsefall.

“Don’t say ‘ain’t,’” Lizzie Rose corrected him. She went on pushing the puppet theatre. The little caravan was top-heavy, and the wheels were worn. Even with Grisini pulling it, it wasn’t easy to maneuver. The two children generally took turns at the back end, but Lizzie Rose tried to make sure she had the lion’s share of the pushing. Parsefall wasn’t much younger than she, but he was considerably smaller, and to Lizzie Rose he looked frail.

Lizzie Rose worried about Parsefall. She had lived with Grisini less than two years, and Parsefall was still a mystery to her. Five years ago, Grisini had taken him from the workhouse to serve as apprentice; before that, the boy seemed to have no past. He was skillful with the puppets and practiced ferociously, almost if he were trying to get back at someone who had wronged him. Sometimes Lizzie Rose came upon him working the puppets with his legs crossed and a look of anguish on his face; he was so caught up with his work that he had forgotten to empty his bladder.

Except for his industry, he had few good qualities. He was selfish and rude, and his personal habits were disgusting. Nevertheless, Lizzie Rose loved him, as she might have loved a small wild animal she was trying to tame. She had a chivalrous tenderness for anyone weaker than herself, and she knew Parsefall was often afraid. Lizzie Rose’s sense of smell was extraordinarily acute, and the stench of fear was unmistakable. Parsefall reeked of it, especially when Grisini was in his darker moods. The boy had nightmares; sometimes such bad nightmares that he wet the bed.

“Come on,” Parsefall urged her obstinately. “’S’my turn.” He turned his back to her so that she could drag the canvas sack off his shoulders and ease it onto her own. He took the back handle of the puppet stage and began to steer it through the streets.

Lizzie Rose gave in. It was a relief to be able to walk without banging her knees against the caravan. She patted Parsefall’s shoulder by way of a thank-you. She knew that he disliked being touched, but she didn’t care. She needed to pet someone, and nobody could pet Grisini.

They passed a tea stall. Lizzie Rose’s stomach growled again. She felt in her pocket and found threepence. On the way home, the buns would be marked down to two a penny. Parsefall adored buns.
It would serve him right if I didn’t share,
thought Lizzie Rose, but she knew she would share. She would even keep a morsel of bread in her pocket for Ruby, Mrs. Pinchbeck’s spaniel.

She sighed. The takings from the puppet theatre had been poor lately. Grisini was surly, and she dared not ask him for money, but she and Parsefall needed many things that Grisini never bothered to provide. Parsefall’s boots were riddled with holes, and his cleanest shirt was dark with grime. Lizzie Rose was tall for her age and growing rapidly; her frocks were much too small. The late Mrs. Fawr had lavished love and skill on her daughter’s clothes. They had been made of the best cloth she could afford, with tucks to let out and hems to let down. Now, a year and a half after her mother’s death, Lizzie Rose had opened the last of the tucks and pressed the hem flat. The skirt was still too short.

Lizzie Rose thought wistfully of the days when she worked with her parents in the theatre. There had been times when there was little money, but her mother had always managed it so that she didn’t look shabby. Lizzie Rose was a striking child, with her bright hair and transparent complexion. Her parents had taught her to carry herself well and to speak clearly. The Fawrs had not been rich, but they had been loving and comfortable. It had been a happy life.

“’S’there.” Parsefall pointed. “That’s the way. Shortcut. Down that alley, and we’ll come to Chester Square.”

Grisini jerked the wagon forward. Neither he nor Lizzie Rose questioned the boy’s knowledge of the streets. Parsefall’s sense of direction was unerring. He could find his way even through fog.

The little procession passed through an alley and came out into the square. There was a large garden, surrounded on four sides by tall houses. The garden, with its bare flower beds and iron fencing, was dreary enough on a wet November day, but Lizzie Rose could imagine how pretty it might be in the springtime.

She craned her neck to look up at the houses. They were tall and stately, with columns on either side of the door. The windows were heavily draped, but the rooms beyond them looked warm and bright. Whoever lived here had money enough for fires in every room, and an army of housemaids to stoke them. Lizzie Rose tried to imagine what it would be like to live year-round in a house like this one, with ample coal in winter and a garden in the spring.

“Shall we knock at the front door?” Grisini flung out one arm as if about to declaim poetry. “Shall we ring and present ourselves to the butler? Shall we say to him, ‘The children of joy have come!’?” Grisini spread his fingers like the sticks of a fan and touched his middle finger to his breast. “Never forget that we, with our puppets and tambourines, are the children of joy! Let us go forth and bring laughter to the children of woe!”

Lizzie Rose and Parsefall exchanged looks of pure irritation. They knew very well that they would be turned away from the front door. Parsefall jerked his head toward the tradesmen’s entrance, a half flight of stairs below the pavement. Lizzie Rose gave the wagon a shove, and Parsefall darted forward so that the two of them could wrestle it down the stairs.

N
ever, thought Parsefall, surveying the Wintermute drawing room, had he seen a house better stocked with things to steal.

It had not been easy, getting the puppet theatre up to the drawing room. There was an outcry when it was discovered that the caravan was too wide to go through the tradesmen’s entrance, and another when the housemaids saw that the wheels were caked with filth from the London streets. Hot water and brushes were fetched so that Lizzie Rose and Parsefall could scrub the caravan clean. While the children scrubbed, Grisini paid his respects to the Wintermute servants, fawning and coaxing by turns. By the time the miniature theatre was parked at one end of the drawing room, Grisini was quite at home, and the butler invited him to take tea in the servants’ hall.

Parsefall knew what that meant.
Tea
meant gin and hot water; he and Lizzie Rose would have to set up the theatre by themselves. He shrugged off his jacket and turned to Lizzie Rose. She was gazing round the drawing room as if it were fairyland. “It’s very grand,” she said, almost whispering, “ain’t it?”

Parsefall eyed her askance. “You said I mustn’t say ‘ain’t.’”

“So I did.” Lizzie Rose smiled at him. “’Tain’t elegant.”

Parsefall gave a sniff of disgust and turned away. One of the things that bothered him about Lizzie Rose was the way she was kind to him when he was doing his best to irritate her. He found it unnerving. Parsefall liked things to be fair: eye for eye and tooth for tooth.

The children began to set up the theatre. The front of the caravan pulled down, covering the wheels, and the sides unfolded like shutters, adding width to the miniature stage. Lizzie Rose unrolled the canvas that hid the puppet workers from the audience. Parsefall set up the puppet rack and hung the puppets on it. Lizzie Rose unpacked the contents of the canvas sack: a set of glass chimes, a tambourine, a tin sheet for making thunder, and a small violin called a kit.

Parsefall eyed the clock on the mantel. There was plenty of time before the show. He would be able to set up perfectly — Parsefall was finicky about setting up — and still have time to steal something. He cast a furtive glance at Lizzie Rose. She had no idea what a skillful thief he was. Grisini wanted her kept in the dark.

The door opened, and a little girl came into the room. She stood aside as a maidservant in a black uniform entered with a tea tray. “Thank you, Agnes,” said the girl, and the maidservant set the tray on the table and left the room.

Parsefall stared at the little girl. He didn’t bother much about girls — it was well known that they weren’t as good as boys — but this was the prettiest girl he had ever seen. She looked like a puppet of the very finest quality. Her eyes shone like blue glass, matching the color of her sash. Her ringlets were as neat as quills of black paper, and her skin was as smooth as wax. And her dress! To Parsefall, who lived in perpetual dinginess, it was blindingly, impossibly white: a frothy confection that showed plump shoulders at one end and embroidered stockings at the other. But though Miss Wintermute was beautiful, she was not graceful. She held herself stiffly and moved as if by clockwork.